And we wonder why so many get cancer. All I can say is, people are too busy to bake at home and therefore expect the store-bought stuff to last forever, thus all the additives. And although I love to bake, I don't do it consistently and I actually have the time. We are all seeking the convenience factor. And I'm pretty sure I'm in the minority of people who actually bake at all. I don't know ANYONE else in my circle of family/friends who bake from scratch. Especially not bread.

Seriously? several things other than flour were listed first in the ingredients?! I wouldn't eat that! Maybe they listed ingredients alphabetically, rather than by quantity? lol! I think I'd contact that "bakery" about it!!!

Sheesh. Even Oreos have sugar as the first ingredient and enriched wheat flour as the second one, and Little Debbie powdered sugar donuts have enriched wheat flour as the first ingredient.

Wonderbread has "wheat flour, enriched" as the first ingredient and Twinkies have enriched wheat flour as the first ingredient. Nature's Own Honey Wheat Bread does list flour as the first ingredient, but further down the list has "Contains One Or More Of The Following: Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Calcium Stearoyl Lactylate, Monoglycerides, Mono- and Diglycerides, Distilled Monoglycerides, Calcium Peroxide, Calcium Iodate, Datem, Ethoxylated Mono- and Diglycerides, Enzymes, Ascorbic Acid ), Psyllium, Monocalcium Phosphate, Citric Acid, Guar Gum, Sodium Citrate, Soy Lecithin, Niacin, Iron ( Ferrous Sulfate ), Thiamine Hydrochloride, Riboflavin, Folic Acid, Soy Flour, Natamycin (To Retard Spoilage)."

Even the junkiest baked goods I can think of, Pop Tarts, have flour as the first ingredient, as does Lender's Bagels, Toaster Strudel. Pizza Rolls have flour as the second ingredient, tomato sauce is the first. The most egregious label I found belonged to TastyKake apple fritters:

Enriched Flour ( Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate-B1, Riboflavin-B2, Folic Acid ), Sugar, Palm Oil, Water, Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Shortening ( Soybean, Cottonseed Oils ), Yeast, May Contain Two PercentOr Less Of : Dextrose, Apples (Preparedwith Sodium Sulfite to Maintain Color ), Calcium Carbonate, Cornstarch, Mono and Diglycerides, Salt, Soy Flour, Leavening ( Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Baking Soda ), Ammonium Sulfate, Monocalcium Phosphate, Agar, Whey ( Milk ), Natural and Artificial Flavors, Calcium Caseinate ( Milk ), Calcium Stearoyl Lactylate, Soy Lecithin, Datem, Coloredwith Annatto and Turmeric Extracts, Dry Honey ( Honey, High Fructose Corn Syrup Solids, Wheat Starch ), Dough Conditioners ( L-Cysteine, Ascorbic Acid, Azodicarbonamide ), Enzyme, Titanium Dioxide Color, Cinnamon, Blue #2 Lake, Citric Acid, Calcium Chloride, Calcium Propionate and Potassium Sorbate Added to Preserve Freshness, Egg .Allergen Information: Manufactured In A Facility That Uses Peanuts .

So what in the heck you were buying? Even cake mix has flour as the second ingredient, and I can't think of anything else that has more chemical ingredients than the ones I listed above.

I also know few people who bake anything past an occasional batch of cookies or cupcakes, which normally come from a mix.

Annie

My sister never reads any labels - not even expiration dates - when she goes grocery shopping. Naturally, she hates it when I go with her to a grocery store and always tries to lose me in the store. Her goal is to get in and out as quickly as possible, as she hates shopping, even shopping for clothes. I make her read fiber content labels on clothes, if I am with her, and of course that slows her down as well.

I think grocery stores can get away with a lot because of people like my sister.

I don't think they are adding that stuff for consumers' desire for long shelf life. They are using it so the store can minimize its losses to spoilage and because some of that crap costs a lot less than real food ingredients do.

That's why any kind of home baked bread is better than most on-the-shelf grocery store bread. Even if the home baked is made with the dreaded white flour. At least you'd know what was in it.

Well, okay, but I can buy bakery products at Whole Foods or Trader Joe's and while they're not like homemade (I only bake sweets nowadays when there are sufficient people to eat it who haven't been told they shouldn't, and I didn't have time that day), they're recognizably food. It was only 6-7 years ago when I had no kitchen for a year, when I could buy something recognizable at the big national chain store. Again, I was willing to give a pass to a few "normal" additives. What I say the other day was scary!!!!! Who ever heard of being scared of pastries.

"Fiber content on clothes" had me laughing until I realized you were speaking of cotton, etc., not "roughage"!

I thought of this thread today when reading the articles about how the UK is recommending that everyone avoid burnt toast and browned potatoes as potential cancer-causers. Some irony there, I think.

Browned potatoes? Uh oh, I'm got some serious dietary changes to do.

Actually, what is the mystery label at this big chain? Pic?

What's always impressed me about some developing countries is that when you go to the market, you don't see the long list of chemicals in the food because the chemicals cost more than the natural ingredients.

Sorry. I didn't take a picture of it.

I've pretty much stopped eating supermarket pastries and the like. Even cookies and such from a store boxed mix then cooked at someone's home. More than a bite or two - one of those ingredients sits like queasy lead on my stomach. Don't know which one, so I avoid it all.

...one of those ingredients sits like queasy lead on my stomach. Don't know which one, so I avoid it all.

Same here, Artemis. Some ingredient that feels like it is not digestible. Cookies are the worst.

Yes plllog, I wish you had saved the package too. I had an hour to kill waiting for DW, so I went to the store and read labels and bought and kept a package of those little cherry 'pie' snack things. It reads very much like the stuff annie1992 copied. You must already know that the first stuff (other than flour) was just the vitamins. Further down were all the di and triglycerides that I suppose are remanufactured but are essentially just fats and stuff that annie's cows are probably generating on their own with the aid of her natural grass. I didn't even see any EDTA or BHT BHA, the latter being free radical trappers to prevent oils going bad. The only thing that I saw in my package that seemed totally unnatural was sodium benzoate.

I didn't buy it!! No package to save!

I know what most of the stuff Annie posted is--thanks, Chas, for breaking it down for us--and most of it isn't that bad if looked at one by one, you're right. I'm far more willing to eat a Pop-Tart, chemicals and all, than whatever that pastry was!

To answer the question - they are baking pre-fab chemicals. They do smell good in the store but contain very little nutrition (or even real food). When I had my baked goods booth at the farmers markets I put out a "store baked" cake with neon colors and the same size of home made no chemicals cake with natural colors and invited the passersby to take a taste and compare. Much to my surprise several said the fake cake was better, but many more swooned at the taste of the real food. I think a lot of people are so used to the artificial colors and tastes that their flavor taste buds no longer register "good" just "used to" as how it tastes.

I went grocery shopping yesterday and this thread had me reading labels on foods I don't ever buy. Wow. I was handling some of them like they were nuclear waste by the time I got to the third ingredient in the list. lol!

I'm happy I can get a whole wheat raisin bread at Publix with nothing but flour, yeast, salt, gluten and raisins. Maybe sugar but that's it. And it's really good.

Edited: I looked up the ingredients and it's "Whole wheat flour, water, honey, raisins, vital wheat gluten, yeast, salt and cinnamon."

Anyway, if you have a Publix, it's worth trying and easier than making.

It took me a while to dig this out from my garbage to show you. I threw it away after I bought it two days ago. It tasted baaaad!

dcarch

Well, at least the first ingredient is flour, Dcarch! But I'm not surprised it tasted bad, though a lot of those ingredients, taken individually, aren't so very bad. I'd think as a whole stew, it couldn't help but affect the final product. Thanks for showing us.

Why do people buy that stuff?

My only guess is that it's as Nancy said, and they don't know what real tastes like and think whatever they're used to is good. One of my favorite things about a rich cake is the egginess. Egg. From eggs. From chickens. Not slime from factories. Eggs taste eggy. Slime tastes like trash.

Why do people buy that stuff?

My only guess is that it's as Nancy said, and they don't know what real tastes like and think whatever they're used to is good.

That, plus they couldn't afford real bakery stuff, which isn't necessarily any better. A couple of years ago I asked the local french bakery if they used butter in butter cream and they looked at me like I was crazy. Butter-flavored crisco all the way, even on a small cake that costs over $30 from an "artisanal" bakery.

So really, what else can they do? The marketing machine has done a great job of persuading them that actually baking it from scratch is far too onerous to attempt at home.

Ugh. No wonder I don't like a lot of cakes and pastries from bakeries! I just thought they weren't good. I didn't realize they were using inferior ingredients.

OTOH, a cousin brought a cake shaped confection from an old bakery that keeps reinventing itself. It was gorgeous and very modern, unlike anything I've seen, but absolutely delicious. But I'm pretty sure they use real butter, eggs, etc.

Yes, I'm sure that if you're in a major urban area you can still find a good bakery, but in small towns the options are mostly increasingly limited.

Sad. The good news for small towns is hipsters. They pop up in the most unlikely places with a passion for artisan foods, the belief in a rosy future of the young, and a desperate need for cheap rent to offset the amount of labor that they're putting in. Do you have any back to the landers near you? To supply the artisan hipsters with fresh cultured butter?

This area is very strange. We have a great many organic farms, but none of the produce is available locally. It all goes to fancy restaurants down in the Miami--Palm Beach megalopolis, and since they have much, much bigger crowds at their farmers markets, everyone shuns the green markets here, which mostly sell grocery-store produce from wholesale boxes.

There is some poor deluded young 'un trying to run a cupcake place out here on the island, but in general this is the land of the early bird special. I've gotten used to the idea that 6:30 pm is too late to go out for dinner. And to pay more than $2 for a single cupcake makes folks feel all faintified.

ETA There was an organic you-pick for a while, but they plowed it all under in preparation for the legalizing of marijuana. Not sure what they'll do since that didn't pass again this fall.

The really sad thing is that really good bread can be insanely easy to make at home - the people who say you need to sweat and toil just never learned... all you need special is a covered cast iron dutch oven - preferably a pretty small one. I have, I think a 2 or 3 quart, enameled one that I found for about $21 at a discount store.

I make big batches of dough by just mixing flour (6 cups all together - I use a mix of white, whole wheat and buckwheat) with 3 cups of water, 1/2 tsp of yeast, and 2 tsps of salt - yup that's all. Mix it up - yes it will be somewhat loose, but all you have to do is mix it until it is combined. Put it aside, I tend to leave mine on the counter for a few hours and then in the fridge until I am ready to use it. It should sit at least overnight, especially when you've started a brand new batch. When you want to cook a loaf, put your dutch oven into the oven and turn on quite high - 475F. While the oven is heating take out your dough scoop out a piece a bit smaller than the size of the loaf you want. Put it on a floured surface and form it into a ball. No- you don't need to knead it or mess with it at all. Pop it into a floured bowl and cover it until your oven gets up to temp. Slash the top of your loaf (don't worry that it hasn't risen much I promise it's OK) and plop it into the pot. Cover and cook for 30min. Take the lid off and cook for another 25 - I also tend to turn the oven down to 425 at this point so that I don't over brown the surface. This extremely simple method turns out consistently exquisite loaves of bread that you'd swear come from a boutique bakery with a fancy oven, it takes barely any time- maybe an hour and a half from dough to bread and almost zero effort. Pop it in there while you prepare the rest of your dinner and voila - you also have fresh bread. If you have the time, you can allow the loaf to rise a little while longer for a slightly lighter loaf, but you don't have too. I also use my dough store to make pizza crust and even cinnamon rolls occasionally (I do use foil for these - burnt sugar is really hard to get off the pot). The mixed dough lasts a good long time before the gluten starts to give out - probably a week or so in the fridge. I just keep my dough replenished - each time I get low I add the same above to my container and it takes on nice sour tang pretty quickly.

Yes, e p, we're aware of Peter Reinhart, the bucket of dough and the dutch oven.

I don't care for the all one dough kind of baking. Nothing wrong with it but I get bored, and it doesn't work well for 100% whole wheat. My pizza dough is quite different from my bread (of which I make several different kinds regularly), which are both quite different from my pastry. Variety is key.

What we're talking about here, however, is that even with the bucket o'dough, making pastry takes some time and effort that picking up a box of pastries at the store does not--except that the box from the store nowadays seems to be inedible!

Writersblock, I always forget about the geriatric population of Florida. It sounds like in your area they're depressing the ability of the hipsters to change the food culture. :)

We have a store in our area called Stew Leonard's and they do a lot of baking on site, but with real ingredients. Drives me nuts as they bake a great tasting corn muffin, but I'm unable to replicate it. But their ingredients list on it looks like what's in a standard homemade recipe.